Lead With Strategy, But Be Obsessed With Design: Takeaways From Roberta’s “Brand Building 101”
April 24th, 2013
Mucca’s Managing Partner, Roberta Ronsivalle, was recently invited to lead a lively conversation about one of our favorite subjects: building brands from scratch. Taking the stage at the Wix Lounge, a community workspace for creative entrepreneurs, Roberta gave the crowd an inside peek into Mucca’s approach to brand building, focusing specifically on the strategic thinking that informs our design process at every step. Check out the full presentation here, dressed to the nines on Slideshare.
Roberta was also joined by Alan Marcus, Senior VP of Brand Marketing at Porter Novelli, and Ashlene Nand, Marketing Strategist for Gap, Nike, and MTV. For more photos from the event, point your browser this way.
Balthazar Featured on PSFK
March 20th, 2013
How do you make a restaurant opened in 1997 feel like it’s been around forever? PSFK took a deep dive into our branding for Balthazar to find out. More after the jump!
Brand New: Agricola
March 13th, 2013
Jim Nawn, the founder and owner of Great Road Farm, had a dream: to open an authentic farm-to-table community eatery in the heart of Princeton, NJ. On Sunday that dream came true — and we finally got to see (with our own eyes) the fruits of our labor. Congrats, guys!
We covered a lot of ground to bring Agricola to life, from our brand strategy and concept development to the restaurant’s identity, print collateral, website, and interior look & feel. Stay tuned for more as the restaurant moves into full swing.
New Mucca Merch: I Hate Helvetica
March 5th, 2013
The greatest of all font family feuds, finally in a wearable format. Printed on American Apparel tees and available at our shop on Society 6. Arial haters: we’ve got you covered too.
Accurat visits Mucca
February 25th, 2013
This past Friday, our friends at Accurat stopped by to show us their latest data visualizations and infographics. As usual, they blew our socks off. Above: a visual history of the Nobel Prize that charts the nationalities of all 555 Nobel Laureates, their alma maters, and their ages at the time of the award.
The visualization, which you can see here in full, is part of an ongoing series for the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. Giorgia Lupi, Gabriele Rossi and the rest of the Accurat team have created 11 visual stories for the paper so far, ranging from J.K. Rowling’s career to the collapse of the 21 largest empires in history. They’ve also dabbled in social media mapping experiments, like the terrific Thanksgiving vs. Black Friday.
Design Education Is Still Necessary. Yay or Nay?
February 21st, 2013
Via The Industry
Imprint has a great breakdown of last week’s Designer’s Debate Club, where two teams of panelists, including our own Matteo Bologna, argued either for or against the motion “Formal Design Education Is Necessary for Practicing Designers.” It’s a valid debate to have, especially when many of today’s most successful designers proudly identify as self-taught. On the other hand, some of those renegades would’ve rather had a more traditional education as their springboard — like Matteo, who “didn’t go to design school but wish I had. Making a success of yourself is very tough without having someone to teach you how not to make mistakes.”
Jordan Koschei, who was also in the audience, boiled it down to a debate between two mindsets: “You don’t know what you don’t know” vs. “The real world is the best classroom.” Whatever side you’re on, clearly the jury’s still out on this one.
Formal Design Education Is Necessary for Practicing Designers. Yay or Nay? — More at Imprint
Brand New: Mucca Launches CreditDo.org
February 14th, 2013
Credit Do is a non-profit that provides people of all ages with credit towards food, clothes, and other essential goods in exchange for doing social good. For such a radically simple idea, Credit Do needed a radically simple way of expressing it.
We helped the Credit Do team define their brand identity and give a voice to their cause, resulting in the freshly launched CreditDo.org. Designed with the look and feel of a long-scrolling infographic, the site illustrates the program’s impact in a simple and relatable way that moves people to action.
Matteo takes the floor @ the next Designer’s Debate Club
January 30th, 2013
Do today’s aspiring designers need a formal education? Or have self-taught DIYers changed the rules of the game? That’s up for debate at the next Designer’s Debate Club, where Mucca’s Matteo Bologna will join a panel of creative professionals to debate the issue. Cast your bets over at the DDC.
The debate will take place on Wednesday, February 13th at 6:30 — get your tickets here.